


retrouvaille

by ediblemomo (junnir)



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, i quote cheesy chick flicks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 08:37:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12250830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junnir/pseuds/ediblemomo
Summary: Of best friends, chick flicks, rusty swings and a five-year separation. // Sana and Momo are best friends who 1) watch chick flicks together at times, 2) hang out on rusty swings they called their own, and 3) get separated for five years when one leaves town.





	retrouvaille

**Author's Note:**

> amidst a breakneck amount of workload i found some time for some respite and made a shameless samo piece just to satiate my own hunger for samo fluff. this is so cheesy i can't.

The glaring white light that the television emitted was beginning to sting their eyes. It had been about an hour or two (they weren’t exactly keeping tabs on the time) since the movie they picked had started its run, giving them more cause to call it a night instead of finishing the film. Their eyes were tired, their bodies even more so — but Sana would never quit just like that. No, it wasn’t like her, not at all. And even if Notting Hill turned out to be the most clichéd chick flick with the most predictable plot and an even more predictable ending, Sana would make Momo sit through it. Even if it meant that the latter would already be fast asleep by the end of it, head tucked in the cozy curvature of Sana’s torso and arm.

This time around, nothing was new. There was a low rumble that came from Momo’s system, her characteristic soft snoring that Sana had grown so used to over the many years shared between them. Momo’s eyes were half-shut, evident of how far gone she already was, and even if she hadn’t exactly fallen asleep, she sure as hell wouldn’t remember this part of the storyline at all.

Sad, because it was the most iconic part, too. The one Sana had been looking forward to, the one she couldn’t stop raving about in an attempt to convince Momo to watch it with her. There stood Julia Roberts’ character, _just a girl_ , asking Hugh Grant’s character, _a boy_ , to love her.

Sana’s heart did something out of the ordinary. She had always expected herself to give visceral reactions to the climactic moments of such movies, when the inevitable aww’s would come about. But she never expected the pang that just hit her.

She paused the movie, looked away — at anywhere but the television — and wondered if the ache came from within. She wondered if there was even an ache at all.

Then Momo’s head dropped. She stirred, shifting her weight around to better fit the curves of Sana’s side. She tucked her head further into Sana’s sides, practically covering her entire face with her best friend’s body.

So there really was an ache. And she knew just where it came from.

Her insides twisted into a huge, messy knot. She unpaused the movie, let it play for a second more, before deciding to put a stop to it right then and there.

If only she could do the same to her feelings.

She calmed down, in the ensuing darkness that washed over them after she stopped the film, and turned to see Momo pulling her knees to herself, curling up into a ball right by her side.

Sana bit back a sigh, and all the words that threatened to come billowing out, before putting a hand on Momo’s head to stroke her hair twice, maybe thrice. The words from the movie repeated themselves in Sana’s head more than thrice.

_“Don’t forget — I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.”_

She could never. She could never do that to Hirai Momo. She could never do that for herself.

She could never.

And that’s why it hurt.

* * *

The merciless summer sun beat down hard on them, claiming what was left of their sanity and composure. Two undeniable essentials they needed to get through what was left of their last semester in school.

They’d both been waiting eagerly for this day, and as liberation finally crept up to them, dread seeped in through the most inconspicuous of cracks.

At first Sana thought it was just the usual case of graduation jitters; of not knowing what came next and what exactly awaited them behind the grand double doors of adulthood. She never thought it could be a premonition for something more, a sign of bad things to come.

Of course, she found out a step too late. She was always, always, _always_ a step too late.

“So they offered me this scholarship.”

_Oh, boo-hoo. So your best friend got a scholarship. Congratulate her, you selfish prick. She’s about to go make something of her life, to go big (or go home). You of all people should not be hungering for her to stay. Not you, Sana. Not you._

She spent the remainder of summer waxing lyrical about all the fun Momo could possibly have. About how she no longer had to cram for good old boring Calculus or World History. About how it was about time that someone finally told Momo she was that good at dancing, good enough to be shipped off to a prestigious performing arts academy in far-away London. Oh, London, what a beautiful city. Sana almost hated Momo for getting to go to London and leaving her behind.

(Mostly for the latter.)

Once or twice, she caught herself in one of her selfish monologue-ish tirades, about how Momo ought to stay by her side, about how she just couldn’t handle life alone without her best friend, about how she’d no longer have anyone to pester to watch chick flicks with.

It always ended sort-of tragically, with her Voice of Reason concluding that there was only so much running she could do, away from impending reality.

And then once or twice, she caught herself crying to sleep, but for what reason exactly, she’d rather not know.

Then came the night before Momo’s flight—which was a blur, mostly.

She remembered when the pull of her bed was too strong to overcome, coupled with the gravitational forces of heavy, tear-soaked eyelids and a general unwillingness to deal with the matter at hand. She remembered not responding to all her calls and texts, despite knowing how a good amount of them were from Momo, asking to see her before she leaves.

Whatever, it’s not like she wasn’t coming back. It’s not like this is the end of their friendship. It’s not like she had any reason to miss her so bad her heart feels like shattering and the pain strangles her senseless.

And though her trusty Voice of Reason had been telling her not to, she finally picked up her phone at the stroke of midnight. A dozen missed calls and a few dozen unanswered messages—she’d expect nothing less from her.

_“Meet me by our usual swing?”_

The dark clouds were apparent even in the dead of night, as Sana sat alone on the swing and pushed herself forward and back, the only sound accompanying her in the dark being the rusty creaking of the contraption she was seated upon. It took Momo twenty minutes to get there, sleep-crusted eyes and half-awake disposition at the ready. She was dressed in a grey college sweatshirt, the one Sana had but in pink—though Sana wasn’t sure if that’s what she should have noticed with Momo’s entrance.

“I woke you up,” Sana noted, her voice unusually mechanical for all the quirkiness that made up who she was.

“I wanted to see you, anyway,” Momo replied, her voice hoarse and ripe with unuse, the end-product of being rudely awakened by her best friend’s hesitation and inability to face reality head-on.

Momo took the empty swing next to Sana’s and gingerly pushed herself forward to match Sana’s rhythm. It didn’t work, in part due to the fact that Momo barely tried. It was two in the morning and far from the right time to go jolly swinging at their usual hideout.

Sana pulled herself to a stop and hopped off. Momo watched her in silence then decided against doing the same. Staying seated meant she could enjoy more of her friend’s company, anyway.

“How long more?”

“Eight more hours.”

Suddenly, their heartbeat was the loudest thing in their ears. The rhythmic thuds and sudden hastening reverberated off their insides much louder than they expected. A clear sign of blood rush, high stakes and rising tensions. This was it—two best friends, with an impending five-year separation standing between them.

Sana decided on staying rooted to the ground right before Momo, while the latter’s swing came to a stop and her grip on the metal chains tightened, in a show of jitters and uncertainty.

Deep breaths, shaky exhales, quivering lips and a wavering gaze.

Her Voice of Reason had no say this time. Zero, zilch, nada.

“I know you’re about to go and I know we’ll be fine. We’ve spent the majority of our lives together already, somehow, and the coming five years is going to be nothing to us.”

There was a heart-wrenching grip that Sana’s words had on Momo and the latter realised she could not even begin to imagine how her best friend was truly feeling at the moment. She knew Sana would miss her, hence the day-long absence and denial of reality, but she never knew it could be this bad.

She never knew it could get worse, either. Until it did.

“This is selfish. But I guess I’ve always been.”

Momo’s fingers wrapped around the chains keeping her afloat as Sana finally looked up and into her eyes.

“I’m just a girl, standing in front of her best friend, asking her not to go.”

She thought she could never. But she did. She did the unthinkable to the one person she swore she could never hurt with her selfishness. She thought she could never but she did.

Hirai Momo was her best friend, but perhaps not anymore.

(Voice of Reason, where art thou?)

She watched, in the loudest form of silence, as her best friend walked away, tears threatening to billow out from both of them, as the distance between them grew longer and farther.

( _Ah, there you are,_ she thought, as her Voice of Reason returned and chanted _you shouldn’t have done that_ to her all the way back home.)

_And now you’ll live to regret it._

* * *

Five years was a long time.

She swore off chick flicks in the years to come. She swore off many things, actually, but chick flicks was by far the most representative item on the list. And purely by merit of the fact that there was no one to watch it with her.

Then again, she never truly liked them anyway, always found them too cheesy despite the heartwarming moments; having had someone to watch it with her made them a lot more enjoyable. Of course, that wasn’t the case anymore.

Five years down the road, she was but a fragment of who she was a long time ago. That was what change did to a person, she came to learn. That it was much beyond just what you saw on the outside; that change came fast and all at once. That when a person’s life changes, naturally, reasonably, a person does too.

It took a few years for her to feel like she could be fine again. But she made it, she grew up and out of the lingering dread that had plagued her since then. The ghost of a question that had gone unanswered, the ghost of feelings and how you never truly forget—the ghosts finally stopped haunting her.

Or that was what she thought, at least.

Coming back from London was a challenge she hadn’t prepared for, and she found that out the hard way when she barely knew her way around anymore. Nor did she know the faces that she felt she would’ve found familiar a long time ago.

It took her a while before she made it to the place she so desperately wanted to go. But what did the extra minutes mean anyway, when this reunion was five years in the making?

So she knocked, gingerly, on the brown door that had once been a sight so familiar she could sketch it from memory. The front of the house felt untouched, looking just as it did years ago when she last saw it. In fact, much of everything was the same—it just didn’t _feel_ that way anymore.

The door opened a second before she had expected it to.

And there stood, in all her glory, the girl she had been waiting so desperately to see.

“Been a long time, huh?”

( _Rediscovery_. _Or retrouvaille_. That was what it felt like. Like finding something you thought you had lost for good.)

The swings were a lot more rickety now, the wear and tear more apparent and the rusty creaking louder than ever before.

They were going back and forth, albeit in a mismatched rhythm that was beautiful in its own right.

Between them stood a wall of silence that was equivalent to five years of separation.

But this wasn’t what she came back for. And this wasn’t what the other had been waiting for.

“Are you back for good?”

“Yeah.”

Their first foray into making conversation wasn’t that bad, no, not as bad as they both thought it’d be. Perhaps that warranted them to take their next step.

“I didn’t write back.”

“Nor did you call.”

Her heart wrenched at the still-mechanical way her best friend (were they still?) responded. Just like how she last spoke five years ago, she thought bitterly.

“I didn’t know what to say.”

“I know.” She looked up at her. “And I’m sorry for that.”

She stilled herself, letting her feet glide to a halt against the dry sand of summer that year. Her fingers wrapped around the rusty metal chains again, instinctively, just like they did a long time ago. She turned to find her best friend (they still were, for better or worse) staring at her, eyes unreadable, gaze still lingering upon the apology she just gave.

Figures, it’s what she thought her best friend deserved. That’s not what the other thought, though.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about, you know.”

“We haven’t spoken for five years.”

Her heart wrenched again. She wanted nothing more than to reach in to the insides of her best friend’s mind and rid her of all these insidious thoughts she disagreed with. After all, not speaking for five years is something that took two to tango.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

Her heart wrenched once more, this time for the last time, as she stood up and went over to stand in the path of the girl she had spent a good majority of her life with thus far.

“Don’t take it back.”

“What?”

“Don’t take back what you said five years ago. Don’t regret it. Please.”

Her best friend stared ahead, her crystal-clear round eyes glazing over in a show of acceptance and defeat.

“You don’t have to make me feel better. It’s been five long years.”

“I’m not.” She was running out of patience. “Just don’t take it back, please.”

Sana remained silent at that, as if conceding to Momo’s desperate request. She stood up to level herself with the latter, but didn’t say a word.

“You’re going to ask me why I came back at this time, of all times.”

“What?”

“You’re wondering why now, of all times. And why I’m saying all these to you now, of all times. Why not a month or a week later, or even a year later too since it’s already been five anyway?”

Five years was a long time.

“And the answer is simple. You might hate me, or resent me for this, but to me, this answer is clear as day. I hate myself for doing this but I think I might hate myself even more if I didn’t.”

Five years was a _really_ long time.

“I heard you got proposed to a week ago. But I also heard you didn’t say yes.”

Sana looked affronted at that. She stepped back, furthering the gap between her and Momo, and put a hand out to stop the latter from coming any nearer.

“So you thought you could swoop back into my life because there was a chance that I still loved you?”

Momo swallowed down the bile rising in her throat, a soundless affirmation hanging in the air around them. “I told you, you might hate me for this.

“I didn’t disappear on you all those years ago because I didn’t feel the same way. I didn’t reach out to you again because I felt like I didn’t deserve you. You bared your heart out to me and I couldn’t even bring myself to say yes... Even though I wanted to. Because staying wasn’t an option, but loving you from six thousand miles away was.”

This wasn’t the way she envisioned their reunion to be. Then again, she didn’t have much of a say in it. After all, who was the one who was late—not by minutes or hours, but by five long years?

This wasn’t like the predictable plot of a clichéd chick flick. This was a cocktail of five years of radio silence between two best friends, their last encounter nothing short of a busted movie ending, and a fifty-percent chance of a catastrophe erupting.

“I’m sorry I took the cowardly way out, Sana. I’m sorry I chose to leave you hanging. And most of all, I’m sorry I wasn’t selfish enough to tell you that you weren’t being selfish.”

Sana’s lips parted then and Momo felt a heightened sense of dread threatening to wash over her. “Wait, no, let me finish first. Please.”

Her pleading eyes shifted between the sand beneath them and the crystal doe-like eyes of the girl before her.

“I’m just a girl, standing in front of the girl she loves, asking her to love her.”

“Oh, Momo...”

She only realised her eyes were shut when she felt a sudden touch on her arm and a sudden subconscious awareness that her best friend was only inches away from her.

Her eyes fluttered open to bore into those familiar doe-like eyes she wanted nothing more than to look into for the rest of her life.

“But I’ve never stopped.”

So their story _was_ predictable, with an ending that was even more so—pretty much a cliché in its own right. But it was a story she’d never get sick of, a story she’d repeat till the last day of the rest of her life. It was a story they could call their own, no matter how unoriginal and hackneyed it might have been. It was theirs.

Just like how she was hers, from then on and for the rest of time.

The next time they put on a chick flick to watch, while safely nestled in the comfort of each other’s arms, they thought:

Theirs was still a better cliché.

* * *

 

(“You based it all on a chance, though.”

“It was all or nothing.”

“Thank god I said no to that proposal, then.”

“Hm. I’m still sorry you lost that diamond ring and fancy wedding.”

Sana smiles and curves her fingers around Momo’s neck, pulling her closer till they melted around each other. “That proposal was doomed to fail, since there was no cheesy speech plagiarised off a chick flick. And...”

“And?”

_“I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.”_

They laugh into each other’s faces and against each other’s lips as Momo dips her head to finally, _finally —_ and quite literally — take Sana’s breath away.)

**Author's Note:**

> liked what you read? leave a kudos or comment! and thanks for reading :)
> 
> psst, bonus points if you knew which film i quoted at the end. heh.
> 
> hit me up @ediblemomo on twitter if you fancy a chat!


End file.
